92-04-18 Born Against – Feeding the Fire – No Sense – A.M.D.

artist’s impression of ‘No Sense’

‘Feeding The Fire’ were a political straight-edge band from Dutch Limburg (Kerkrade). Burt & Michiel of ‘Man Lifting Banner’ released their No Submission 7” on their label, Red Wax recs (in 1993). The line-up was (I think) Rob Franssen (vocals), Roger (bass), Dennis ‘Crustbus’ Niesing ? (drums; René Natzel played on the 7″), and guitarists Illona Stephan & Har(ald) Brosselt. (see 91-12-21)

Also ‘No Sense’ were from The Netherlands’ ‘deep south’… Eric Hellebrand’s (bass) favourite bands are ‘No Means No’ & ‘Victims Family’ so you get an idea of how they sounded… Also in the band: Har(ald) Brosselt (vocals; guitar for ‘F.T.F.’), Roy Moonen (drums) and Léon Kleikers (guitar). A few months after this they would record their 7” Ruminating Small Fry.

A month after their 1^st passage ‘Born Against’ was here again… Saying goodbye to their tour-mates (‘Nations On Fire’) and us…. (92-03-08)

‘A.M.D.’ (‘Anti Military Demonstration’) from Budapest, Hungary were (at that time) Sotar (vocals), Lörke (Sandor Fuleki; guitar), Kiskovacs (Zoltan Kovacs; drums) and Sik Endre (bass)… Their music was metal-influenced HC/thrash and the lyrics were in Hungarian. The guys hardly spoke English, only the bassist… I’d gotten to know them via their Sucking Stalin tape in 1988 but they also had an LP out called The Horrors Of War, And Worse! (1991)… (For those who speak Hungarian go to amd-bphc.blogspot.com)

I was really sick and had a fever before the show which was gone afterwards. Bands like ‘Born Against’ and that whole scene marked the beginning for a lot of people (including us). We were being too politically correct for a while, unrealistic and very black and white about things. Obviously not saying people shouldn’t be political but it was a scene being against almost everything. We grew out of it fast luckily. It was a really good show and ‘Born Against’ were at their height back then.

Rob Franssen, ‘F.T.F.’

The second time I was at the V.V. I think for ‘Born Against’ this was the last one of their tour. I don’t recall much of the gig other than ‘B.A.’ were pretty intense. I didn’t know their records until then but was immediately blown away.

Cartsen Pötter, visiter from Frankfurt

The kick-pedal of the drum-kit was totally double-folded by ‘Born Against’s drummer…

Léon Kleikers, ‘No Sense’ guitarist

‘Born Against’ was an emotional wreck on that tour but looking back on most of the videos on YouTube, we played pretty well. And I do think we had a (hypocritical) point about the U.S. musical/style imperialism in Europe at the time that allowed us to tour [Brob: In my view ‘Born Against’ was totally different from the ‘imperialists’…], but also rewarded so many American bands who came over just for being American.

I am still in touch with Sam, saw Jon at a ‘Rorschach’ reunion show and I hear Bret’s doing AOK right now. I am happily living in Richmond, Virginia with my two daughters and wife Alyssa (she sang in ‘Disrupt’ for awhile). I run a jail education-program here and teach adult literacy and English as a Second Language.

Adam Nathanson, ‘Born Against’ guitarist

First of all, many thanks to Brob for persistently inviting us to stroll down memory-lane, a.k.a. harshly confronting us with a long-gone past, which we’ve been carefully moulding and polishing into semi-self-critical historical bliss. If you have young children, you know how often Lightning McQueen says: “Master, this did not happen”… Which leads me to quote Rob Franssen, who said in this blog: “… We grew out of it (being against almost everything) pretty fast”… Oh dear, how I envy your good memory. Mine must be totally distorted. Just like I seem to remember how ‘F.T.F.’ got the VortnVis gig in the first place. After years of lobbying, Bruno VdV and I had signed a contract in triplicate that ‘No Sense’ were going to play at the V.V., together with a German band we knew (seriously, I can’t remember their name right now but they were not straight-edge, they were not well known at all; they were amazing musicians and very nice people though). When Rob F. found out, he insisted that ‘F.T.F.’ deserved to play instead (picture Boris Becker with a tantrum and you get the idea); so that’s what happened. The German band didn’t seem to object very much. They were not political and felt that ‘Born Against’ would tear them to bits because of their apparent lack of political commitment. For those who know German, the phrase he used was “Die werden uns in der Luft zerreissen.”. I think he captured well how ‘B.A.’ were perceived and respected by many at the time. What impressed me most was their explosive sadness-driven (rather than the index-finger-we-know-what’s-good-for-you-lecturing attempts from the imperialist fleet) story-telling. It seemed very real at the time, certainly not hypocritical as Adam Nathanson seems to think. For our band ‘No Sense’, this gig was the absolute pinnacle in terms of crowd-intensity and joy-while-playing. I have fondly accessible rock-star memory snippets of being carried-by-the-crowd-while-playing but according to my V.V. guestbook-entry, I was more concerned with the quality of the sanitary facilities. ‘No Sense’ continued until early 2000s but gradually started to dissolve after I moved to grad school in ‘97. We all have successful careers, abandoned the ideals we never pretended to have and continue to have different opinions about whether ‘Kreator’s Pleasure To Kill is better than ‘Metallica’s Master Of Puppets.

Eric Hellebrand, ‘No Sense’ bassist

From Reminder zine (done by Wim & Chat’n ‘Blindfold’): >>‘Feeding The Fire’ is a communist band and they carry that out on stage. Rumour is they will get a new drummer. They should. The slow parts are heavy and moving, but the fast bits are too fast. ‘No Sense’ is fun-HC. Yes! The music is silly but (most) lyrics are serious. This made us go wild. We’d never heard of ‘A.M.D.’ before. They were good, musically. Social lyrics. Listening-music. But they played too long. ‘Born Against’ played the V.V. for the second time and it was the best. Last show of their Euro-tour and they gave everything they had left. A short but good set. The drummer let out his frustrations on the drum-set in a negative way; the only negative aspect of the show…<<

At first I couldn’t remember where the V.V. was and what happened at the gig; we did so many concerts those days and we did drugs… Later a few things came to my mind because we had only one concert in Belgium during that tour. That whole tour was managed by Esteban [brother of Macario (Alternativnoise)], a friend from France. We came from somewhere Germany and teased him on the way, because we got lost a lot of the time and arrived late, so tired and hungry. Sotar, the singer was disappointed because of the vegetarian food. He was mad about meat. I have good memories of the concert, the place and response. How can I forget playing with ‘Born Against’!? They did a very intensive concert – I listened to it with an open mouth. It was great( By the way, thanks for organising this, it was a real experience for an Eastern-European band that time. In ’87, when we started to play, we got no passports, so we couldn’t play abroad. Two years later things had changed here in Hungary, the borders opened, so we did lots of concerts between ’89 and ’94. Then in 1994 Sotar died, what overwhelmed us. With a new singer (Cséb) we did a new album (Túlélők, meaning Survivers) but it was somehow different than before. My drug-addiction also progressed and ‘A.M.D.’ started to fall apart. The band-members changed a lot. In 2005 – when I had been clean for a while – I was asked to play again. Until that time we just played concerts in our country. The members of ‘A.M.D.’ are the same: Kiskovács (drums), Sík (bass), Lörke (guitar); we asked our old friend Fido to play guitar as well. And we found a good singer: Seza. In 2012 we finished our new album. But because of families and work we have little time to play music. One of us is printer, the other is driver and I’m a social-worker, making music- and theatre-therapy. All ‘A.M.D.’ albums can be downloaded from our blog: http://amd-bphc.blogspot.hu

Lőrke, AMD’s guitar-player

gig-review (Reminder #1)

excerpts from the V.V. guestbook:

additions wellcome!…